California AG Created an Environmental Justice Bureau, Now a Trendsetter

"With President-elect Joe Biden focused on environmental justice, more states could join California, New Jersey, Washington and New Mexico in setting up EJ units."

"The waterfront cement plant and shipping terminal proposed in south Vallejo, California, promised to bring jobs, revitalize the ailing city and, of course, do no harm—the classic pitch working-class communities hear when heavy industries come knocking.

This time, residents organized. Vallejo, on the Napa River downwind of several San Francisco Bay Area refineries, with a population of 121,900, already had one of the highest asthma rates in the state. It didn’t need more pollution.

A massive concrete factory on a prominent bluff would bring not only freight trains and ships (through a proposed resurrected rail line and port) but also hundreds of tanker trucks, rumbling through residential streets every day."

Evelyn Nieves reports for Inside Climate News December 26, 2020.

Source: Inside Climate News, 12/29/2020